We know that sometimes people come to YouTube looking for a specific video, but at other times, they have only a rough idea of the kind of videos they want. We’ve been there too, and have been thinking for a while about this challenge of searching when you don’t yet know exactly what you’re looking for.

Here’s a glimpse inside how we are approaching this challenge:

In coming up with a solution, we wanted to help you specify your search even if you started with something as vague as “funny”. We also wanted to surface varied sets of videos and make it easy for you to explore them further.

To that end, we have a prototype we’d like you to try out. It’s called “YouTube Topics on Search” and you can get to it from TestTube. Here’s a video showing you how it works:

Put simply, we try to identify topics on YouTube and associate videos with them. We use many different sources to find these topics, including frequently used uploader keywords, common search queries, playlist names, and even sources outside of YouTube such as Wikipedia articles.

When you search -- for example, let’s say for “obama” -- we suggest other related topics tied to videos that you might want to explore, such as “michelle obama” or “john mccain.” You can click to get to videos on these topics or you can find videos that contain both topics by clicking on the (+) next to the topic. This is handy for refining. For instance, try searching for “turkey” and you’ll see “thanksgiving” as a refinement option further down the page. We hope topics become a fun way to explore new and interesting corners of YouTube’s video universe.

To start you exploring, we’ve planted topic “Easter eggs,” which we challenge you to find. Here are a couple of hints relating to just some of the topics out there:

Elizabeth - Like the creativity, however I think that's too much work for users. I can understand if someone came to YouTube because they were bored and need some kind of "channel surfing" recommendations Palash was going over. However, if Im using search to find videos of a topical interest its just easier to refine my existing search. It takes ~3 seconds to carry out and there's very little additional thinking involved (remember Steve Krug).

There was also a study done at Palo Alto that found that users hunt for information the way animals hunt prey. As long as there is a scent (even a small one) we'll follow it for quite some time. Also guessing links to click quickly through scanning was found to be a little like gambling with a reward at the end if you clicked right. However, if too much work is involved (thinking), users got tired and went away (the scent was gone).

Yours is a novel idea, but I'd rather refine my search and move on down the road (a bit narrower this time and a bit more relevant) rather than learn a new system that doesnt build upon existing skills or experiences.

Well I didn't know where to go so I'll ask it here, well i would like to upload to youtube some cuts regarding the brittish band Gallows from the movie Relentless - Lives of the Artists (with Relentless permission of course), that can be found on Relentless officiall site, however i'm sure that the video lenght will be more than 15 minutes, by any chance will I be able to upload that video to youtube, knowing it will be more than 15 minutes? thanks in advance, my youtube account is qotsajoel, I will wait a reply over my youtube account, cheers!

What is really missing is YT "Advanced Search" where I can get a list/feed of videos without even specifying a search keyword - search by narrowing duration of video, number of views, etc. example "return all videos uploaded within last 3 days which have received 50000 views minimum and duration less than 5 minutes". Note I didnt specify a keyword. I am interested in all such videos. This is my way of discovering new videos.